The D.I.Y tank made by Syrian rebels is controlled with a Playstation controller

Arab Spring brought its own winds of change but in some places, the change has yet to take place completely as the gruesome fighting still continues while the civilized world is still confused about whose side it is on, which is why, Syrian rebels for not getting any foriegn support came up with their own ingenious idea. A homemade tank.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the video for the tank on any other site than Youtube so for now, you will have to deal with a few screenshots from the video.

Video game controllers have been used by civilized institutions as well, during the Japanese Fukushima disaster, scientists used X Box controllers to send in robots to assess the damage and do other things, the Syrian rebels though, have taken the video game and D.I.Y concept a step ahead of everyone.

Called the Sham II, presumably after ancient Syria, the tank was built by a rebel engineer somewhere in the city of Aleppo.

According to the AFP, a rebel engineer based near the city of Aleppo spent a month building the armored vehicle around a re-purposed car chassis, added cameras to it, and then hooked up a machine gun to a PlayStation controller and a TV screen inside. Four meters long and two meters wide, the vehicle is now readying to “join the fray in Aleppo as part of the Saad Benmoaz battalion of the Al-Ansar brigade.”

Although it doesn’t have huge cannons like military do but at the cost of just 10,000 $ (excluding the price of the gun), it does seem like quite a bargain.

It’s the gun that makes it into a proper fighting vehicle. The machine gun appears to be a 7.62 millimeter PKM with a camera hooked onto it. This gun and its camera are also controlled by a Playstation controller from inside the truck. The driver, meanwhile, has a TV screen linked to three cameras mounted to Sham II’s front with a fourth camera in the back. Protecting both the driver and gunner are 2.5 centimeters of steel plating, which can’t resist rounds from tanks or rocket-propelled grenades but is reportedly able to withstand fire from a 23-millimeter cannon.

However, Syrian rebels have captured President Assad army’s tanks and are put to use against them but there’s more, this is the Sham II, a successor to the first tank built by the rebels called just Sham which had just enough armor to protect the driver only and had seen its fair share of the war.